Battle Among Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago to House the New George Lucas/’Star Wars’ Museum Is Over — And the Winner Is …

For a number of months the cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago have been battling to see which city will house George Lucas' new museum.

And the winner is … Chicago.

According to the Los Angeles Times: "The Lucas Museum of Narrative Arts, expected to open in 2018, will feature art from Lucas’ personal collection — including works by Norman Rockwell, N.C. Wyeth and Maxfield Parrish — as well as exhibitions on 'Star Wars,' the motion picture industry and digital media."

The article notes: "Chicago had this advantage: investment executive Mellody Hobson, Lucas’ wife (the two married last year) and a lifelong Chicagoan. The couple is spending half the year in her native city, and the two have quickly become top-tier philanthropists there."

San Francisco was in the running because Lucas is from that area and has long based his filmmaking operations in the Bay Area.

As for Los Angeles, besides being to closely tied to the movie industry, Lucas studied film at the University of Southern California. The city of Los Angeles offered to tear down the Los Angeles Sports Arena, located very close to USC, and to build the new museum on that site.